Brussels, 04/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 4 September, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled against France a second time (case C-237/12), over its incorrect transposition of the nitrates directive (91/676/EEC) “in a very large part” of its territory, bringing about “a risk of pollution of its waters by nitrogen”, the Court states. Although it has managed to avoid fines for the time being, France will have to come into line with the rules very quickly in order to avoid further action being taken by the Commission, which would lay it open to the risk of stiff penalties.
Principally, France was accused of: - failing to ban, or banning for excessively short periods, the application of certain fertilisers for the main autumn and spring harvests; - incorrectly authorising the use of fertilisers on soils which alternately thaw and freeze within 24 hours and the application of certain fertilisers to frozen or snow-covered ground, even though this increases the risks to groundwater and surface waters; - failing to lay down clear criteria for the conditions under which fertiliser may be applied to slopes with a considerable gradient and failing to ban the application of livestock manures and effluents on soils located close to surface waters or fallow land on a slope, which leads to increased water pollution. Furthermore, France used excessively high figures for the purposes of calculating the quantities of nitrogen excreted by cattle (with the exception of dairy cows) as well as by poultry, sheep, goats, horses and rabbits. Lastly, France incorrectly calculated the storage capacity of livestock effluents and its rules were not specific enough to allow farmers or the supervisory authorities to determine precisely the quantity of nitrogen to apply in order to guarantee balanced fertilisation.
The French government responded to this judgment of the Court by stating that it refers “to an earlier generation of action programmes” applied in areas vulnerable to nitrate pollution and that “most of the issues raised in the verdict of the Court of Justice have already been dealt with in the new instrument”.
This is the second time that the Court has ruled against France over the nitrates directive, following its judgment of June 2013, when the country had failed to produce a complete inventory of vulnerable areas. (FG)